Status updates

Alas, this isn't a post to announce more frequent entries, as I still have far too many things taking up my time to give this blog the attention it deserves. But I will be doing my best to post more here; as the TV season winds down, I hope to have a little more time.

In the meantime, if you just can't get enough of my smiling (or scowling, more likely) face or lovely voice, two important notes: My weekly appearances on Vegas' Xtreme Radio (107.5 FM) have been moved from afternoons to mornings; you can now catch me Fridays at 9:15 a.m. Pacific time on the station's new DAM morning show, featuring former Xtreme Disorder co-host Dave Farra. It's a touching reunion for Dave and me.

Also, the Jamie Kennedy documentary Heckler, for which I filmed an appearance a few years ago, is apparently airing quite frequently on Showtime these days. I haven't seen it, but others assure me that I only appear for about a minute, and come off fairly well. Thank goodness.

Movies opening this week

Hear me chat about these movies with Michael T. Toole, contributing writer for Turner Classic Movies, on this week's Josh Bell Hates Everything podcast. And check out this week's video segment, on The Soloist.

Earth (documentary, dir. Alastair Fothergill & Mark Linfield)
My review in Las Vegas Weekly
I know it's probably mean-spirited to cut down this well-meaning educational film, but I did find it extraordinarily dull, and mostly devoid of anything useful or new. For kids who've never seen anything like this, I suppose it's not bad, and it's more impressive to see these images on a big screen than on a TV (where you can catch similar stuff regularly on Discovery and Animal Planet). But this is still a cursory introduction and a scattershot portrayal of the animal kingdom. Disney seems set on pushing this nature-film brand, so I hope that the teased next outing, Oceans, to be released next year, will have better focus and more in-depth insights. Wide release

Fighting (Channing Tatum, Terrence Howard, Zulay Henao, dir. Dito Montiel)
My review in Las Vegas Weekly
I still expect good things from Montiel, whose debut feature, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, I liked quite a bit. Despite intermittent efforts to do something artistic here, though, this movie certainly doesn't qualify. Howard is apparently angling to be the new Nicolas Cage with his oddball line deliveries, and Tatum gives Paul Walker a run for his money as the least charismatic actor working today. Definitely a waste of somebody's talent. Wide release

Sin Nombre (Paulina Gaitan, Edgar Flores, Kristian Ferrer, dir. Cary Joji Fukunaga)
My review in Las Vegas Weekly
So much well-meaning mediocrity this week. This was a big hit at Sundance, and it's not hard to see why: It serious-minded and socially conscious, and sympathetic to poor immigrants. It's also fairly flat and predictable, with a silly melodramatic climax. Not as irritating as a bullshit indie-formula movie like Sunshine Cleaning, but also not worthy of the mountain of praise it's gotten. Opened limited March 20; in Las Vegas this week

The Soloist (Robert Downey Jr., Jamie Foxx, Catherine Keener, dir. Joe Wright)
I keep waiting for Joe Wright to make a transcendentally brilliant movie, because it's clear from his past work that he's a striking visual stylist. The first hour or so of Atonement was a stellar fusion of form and content, even if the movie lost its way in the second half. This movie is just all wrong for Wright, though; it's an inherently small, internal story about the friendship between two very different men, and a writer's frustration at being unable to magically cure the schizophrenic street musician he discovers and befriends. Wright jazzes things up excessively, Foxx gives a mannered, nearly "full retard" performance, and only Downey holds things together with his typical jaded awesomeness. Someone give Wright another period epic or a dense sci-fi thriller or something where his grandiose visions will serve the story. Wide release

Movies opening this week

(Apologies again for lateness. My hope for more free time in the last few weeks has obviously not come to fruition.) Hear me chat with Angela Abshier of the Las Vegas 48 Hour Film Project about these movies, as well as the Project itself, on this week's Josh Bell Hates Everything podcast. And this week's video, about State of Play, is much more straightforward than the last one. We're still working on that balance between informative and wacky.

Crank: High Voltage (Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Dwight Yoakam, dir. Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor)
I have mixed feelings about the Crank franchise. On one hand, it's definitely fun and visually inventive and unlike pretty much any other action movies out there. On the other hand, it's so misogynistic and crass that it's sometimes uncomfortable, and the relentless efforts to go over the top get pretty tiresome here. Like the first one, this is fun and exciting for 45 minutes or so, and then it's just exhausting. But rabid fans of the series will surely enjoy themselves, and I do understand why. Wide release

Gomorrah (Salvatore Cantalupo, Salvatore Abruzzese, Gianfelice Imparato, dir. Matteo Garrone)
I spent probably the first hour of this movie just trying to figure out who the characters were and how they related to each other, and even at the end I wasn't quite sure how the various organizations worked, or what was behind the main turf rivalry. Eventually, though, enough connections become clear that you can follow the action, and the second half is much more exciting and interesting. A lot of comparisons have been made to The Wire, but this movie reminded me more of something like City of God, with its focus on poor urban residents for whom crime is the only possible way of life. The police are little more than a spectral presence here, and there rarely seems to be a life beyond the confines of the neighborhood. This movie requires a little too much work to get into, and its characters sometimes seem a little like archetypes rather than people, but for the most part it's worth the effort. Opened limited Feb. 13; in Las Vegas this week

State of Play (Russell Crowe, Rachel McAdams, Ben Affleck, dir. Kevin Macdonald)
My review in Las Vegas Weekly
I really do appreciate this movie's earnest efforts to bolster old-fashioned journalism, but unfortunately it's not actually nearly as exciting as what Russell Crowe practices here. Although they did effectively capture the questionable fashion sense of newspaper writers; I totally own the same calculator watch that Crowe's rotund colleague wears throughout the movie. Wide release

Movies opening this week

No podcast this week thanks to a scheduling mishap and a general lack of interesting things to discuss. There is, however, much wackiness in this week's video (possibly a little too much). Next week will probably be a little more straightforward.

Observe and Report (Seth Rogen, Anna Faris, Ray Liotta, dir. Jody Hill)
This movie seems to be pretty divisive; the Weekly's own Mike D'Angelo professes a mix of respect and annoyance in his review, and I felt a little bit the same way, although I'm not quite as taken with Hill's integrity as Mike is. I had a similar reaction to this as I did to Eastbound & Down, which Hill created along with Danny McBride and Ben Best (both of whom appear in Observe). It's a bunch of assholes doing terrible things to each other for 90 minutes, and while it does have an uncompromising tone, it's unpleasant to watch and not funny. The narrative was also very limp; it felt episodic, like it could have been divided in thirds and functioned as an Eastbound spinoff. I give Rogen credit for playing against type and being willing to come off as completely unlikable, but I don't think the gamble really works out for him here. Wide release

Movies opening this week

Hear me chat about these movies with my most frequent guest, the man always willing to let me subject him to bad movies, Las Vegas Weekly Managing Editor Ken Miller, on this week's Josh Bell Hates Everything podcast. No video this week, as videographer Scott is out of town. Should return next week.

Adventureland (Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Ryan Reynolds, dir. Greg Mottola)
I think some of my recent descriptions of this movie have made it sound not as good as it really is, but I honestly do recommend it, and I think it's a kind of sleeper that will appeal to a pretty broad audience. It is indeed familiar and largely predictable, but I don't think that's a huge problem. Part of the appeal is that this is a warm, heartfelt story that's easy to relate to, and that comes because of the familiarity, not in spite of it. Even though it's not hard to guess what the characters will do, they still feel like real people with real emotions, and you can easily get invested in what happens to them. Stewart does a much better job of portraying genuine romance than she did in Twilight, and Eisenberg is appealing as always. Like Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, this is a sweet, nostalgic movie about young love that recalls the John Hughes oeuvre (this one is even set in 1987). Call me a softie, but I wholeheartedly recommend it. Wide release

Fast & Furious (Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster, dir. Justin Lin)
My review in Las Vegas Weekly
I stand by my assessment of the opening sequence as a bravura standalone set piece. It's no wonder they used a truncated version of it as the only footage in the trailer; the rest of the movie is repetitive and superfluous, a rehash of the other movies in the series (or at least the first two; I haven't seen the third). I don't think there's really anything more to say, although Karina Longworth does a pretty impressive job of bringing some rigorous analysis to this entirely disposable film (just ignore the boneheaded comments). Wide release

The Great Buck Howard (Colin Hanks, John Malkovich, Emily Blunt, dir. Sean McGinly)
My review in Las Vegas Weekly
I saw this movie at CineVegas nearly a year ago (a shortened version of my festival review is in this week's LVW), and I don't remember all that much about it except how utterly unremarkable it was. All of these famous faces, and yet no life to the movie. Malkovich, as always, hams things up admirably, but otherwise I can barely recall anything else worth mentioning. Opened limited March 20; in Las Vegas this week

Sunshine Cleaning (Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Alan Arkin, dir. Christine Jeffs)
My review in Las Vegas Weekly
A big week for Emily Blunt movies in Vegas, and she's good in both of them even if neither of them is a very good movie. This is one that I liked less and less the more I thought about it; despite the strong performances from Blunt and Amy Adams, this movie is dour, self-serious, manipulative and full of heavy-handed symbolism. It's as phony as any special-effects extravaganza, but in a way more annoying because people will think it's meaningful. The actors deserve better. Opened limited March 13; in Las Vegas this week

Movies opening this week

Hear me chat about these movies with Anthony Del Valle of the Las Vegas Review-Journal in this week's Josh Bell Hates Everything podcast. And check out my latest video segment, on Monsters vs. Aliens (this one is a bit wacky; we are still trying different stuff to make these distinctive).

The Haunting in Connecticut (Virginia Madsen, Kyle Gallner, Elias Koteas, dir. Peter Cornwell)
A generic movie to go with its generic title, with absolutely nothing new to add to the haunted-house genre. It does skirt some interesting ideas, including positing that terminal illness can put people closer to the spirit world, but none of the characters are developed enough for their specific traits (the family patriarch has a drinking problem that only shows up when it's convenient for the plot) to have any bearing on the story. Also loses points for featuring another "bad things are happening, I think I will take a shower" moment, which should be banned from horror movies forever. Wide release

Monsters vs. Aliens (Voices of Reese Witherspoon, Seth Rogen, Will Arnett, Hugh Laurie, dir. Rob Letterman & Conrad Vernon)
My review in Las Vegas Weekly
My podcast guest this week brought up an interesting point this week that we often are more forgiving of unambitious movies that hit their mark than we are of ambitious failures, but I think there's room to praise both. To be clear, this is a movie with modest ambitions that mostly succeeds, and while I wouldn't urge adults to rush out to see it, if you end up having to go with kids, I think you'll be entertained and engaged at least most of the time. That's a big step up from a lot of animated kids' movies (including a number also from DreamWorks). Wide release

Movies opening this week

(Apologies for the general sparseness of posts lately. Things have been pretty busy with various new and old projects, but I hope for some extra time soon.)

Hear me chat about these movies with Las Vegas Weekly Associate Editor T.R. Witcher in this week's Josh Bell Hates Everything podcast. There will be a video segment this week, also, on Duplicity, but it isn't quite done yet.

The Class (Francois Bégaudeau, Esmérelda Ouertani, Rachel Regulier, Franck Keïta, dir. Laurent Cantet)
This seemed like a potential frontrunner for the foreign-language Oscar this year, although it lost out to Japanese movie Departures. I would have been happy to see it win; it's generally a clear-eyed, unsentimental take on schooling, not shying away from the difficulties inherent in teaching kids who don't want to learn, or don't respect their teachers/institutions, or are just across such an enormous cultural gulf that there's no way to reach them. It also doesn't vilify anyone specifically - the teacher is well-meaning but far from perfect, and makes mistakes; some of the students are bright and dedicated, but still moody and disrespectful; the administrators can be overly bureauratic, but they genuinely want to help. I could have gone for a little more of life outside the school grounds, although I understand why Cantet stays away from it; the teacher especially was a bit too much of an enigma especially given some of his emotional outbursts. Still, overall this movie was very effective, and it makes me curious to see Cantet's other films. Opened limited December 19; in Las Vegas this week

Duplicity (Clive Owen, Julia Roberts, Paul Giamatti, dir. Tony Gilroy)
My review in Las Vegas Weekly
I was really excited for this film: a sexy throwback caper movie starring Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, from the guy who made Michael Clayton? Sounds like my favorite thing ever. But while Roberts and Owen have great chemistry, they don't get to show it off nearly enough, and the convoluted plot drags along slowly, and turns out to be sort of beside the point anyway. I still think Gilroy has a lot of talent, and look forward to what he does next, and I was surprised at how happy I was to see Roberts back onscreen (even though I apparently didn't even realize she'd been gone), but this turned out to be a serious disappointment. Wide release

I Love You, Man (Paul Rudd, Jason Segel, Rashida Jones, dir. John Hamburg)
My review in Las Vegas Weekly
This is a minor one in the canon of Apatow-adjacent comedies, certainly, but it's a perfectly entertaining way to spend 90 minutes (unfortunately, it's 110 minutes long). I laughed multiple times, and that's enough to excuse the predictable plotting, lack of insight and occasional overly vulgar bits. Rudd and Segel could save nearly anything, as they prove here with help from a formidable lineup of comedy all-stars. Wide release

Knowing (Nicolas Cage, Chandler Canterbury, Rose Byrne, dir. Alex Proyas)
This is being read by some as a religious allegory of sorts, so I expected far more heavy-handed sermonizing than I ultimately got. Really, as my friend pointed out, it's as much a Close Encounters ripoff as anything else, in the end. But all the mystical, weird sci-fi stuff is completely unearned, and also pretty inconsistent with the first half of the movie, which is more of a conspiracy-minded thriller. Neither part works particularly well, thanks to Cage's typically awful acting (which infects the rest of the cast) and a jumble of incoherent plotting, but at least the first half has a couple of cool action sequences, one with a plane crash and another with a truly impressive train derailment. It's not enough to make the movie worthwhile, though, especially as it heads toward the totally nonsensical, New Age-y ending. Angels or aliens, either way it's a complete mess. Wide release

Movies opening this week

Hear me chat about these movies with Jeffrey K. Howard of Vegas Film Critic and KVBC Channel 3 on this week's Josh Bell Hates Everything podcast. And check out my latest video segment, about The Last House on the Left. (I think last week's was smoother, unfortunately. It's a learning process.)

The Last House on the Left (Tony Goldwyn, Monica Potter, Garret Dillahunt, Sara Paxton, dir. Dennis Iliadis)
My review in Las Vegas Weekly
I watched the original Wes Craven movie last week for the first time in a number of years, and it's clearly a very amateurish, rough production with a lot of elements that don't work. I love Craven, but of his most highly regarded films, it's definitely one of the worst. Still, part of the reason it's valuable at all is that roughness, that sense of its being a personal vision that comes across regardless of the limitations. Its political engagement may be a little overstated, but it's definitely there, and that lends the movie some weight and makes it seem less crass. This new version has the full power of Hollywood filmmaking behind it, but it thereby loses the personal touch, the sense of making a statement, and becomes another assembly-line horror movie, albeit with much nastier violence (Jeff, on the podcast, was extremely disgusted with the violence). It's very much like Watchmen in that it stays fairly faithful to the original narrative (although more things are changed here, some that seem pretty important) but completely misses the spirit and thus ends up meaningless. And that's even with Craven as producer (though he's probably just doing it to make some money and further extend his brand). Maybe it will point people toward the original, or Craven's films in general, though, and that wouldn't be a bad thing. Wide release

Miss March (Zach Cregger, Trevor Moore, Craig Robinson, Raquel Alessi, dir. Zach Cregger & Tervor Moore)
I really dislike Cregger and Moore's sketch-comedy show The Whitest Kids U' Know, so I suppose I was predisposed to dislike this movie. But it really is awful, and in a different way from the TV show, which is full of bizarre, absurd gags that stretch out interminably. Here, the gags are mostly conventional and obvious (although there are a handful of weird bits), and aren't quite flogged to death, but they're just as awful and unfunny and tone-deaf (perhaps even more so). Moore is one of the most grating screen presences I've ever experienced, and he basically is the movie, despite Cregger's straight man being the ostensible main character. File this one in the increasingly large pile of horrible movies of 2009, somewhere below Paul Blart but probably still above New in Town. Wide release

Movies opening this week

Hear me chat about these movies (mostly just Watchmen) with Jay Bosworth of Maximum Comics on this week's Josh Bell Hates Everything podcast. Also, as if reviewing movies in print, online, on the radio and in podcasts weren't enough, I'm now doing weekly video segments as well, which are online now and will eventually (hopefully) be part of a TV-show launch by Las Vegas Weekly's parent company in a few months. Check out the first one (about Watchmen) here. Feedback encouraged (it's my second time on camera, ever).

Two Lovers (Joaquin Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow, Vinessa Shaw, dir. James Gray)
I haven't seen Gray's earliest films, but when watching We Own the Night I got the distinct impression that he was more interested in family dynamics than in cop drama, so I suppose it makes sense that he's finally dropped the crime stuff and made a movie that's all about relationships. Like We Own the Night, this movie is definitely plodding and awkward at times, and a touch melodramatic. But it's buoyed by strong performances - Phoenix (in his allegedly final role) does the insecure, needy codependent well, and Paltrow, who's known more these days for being famous than for being an actress, proves that she still has the skill to embody a real person. Both of their characters are essentially selfish and unlikeable, but the story manages to engage nonetheless, building a sort of sick, depressing inevitability to it as it reaches the end. (It's the first movie in the relaunched CineVegas arthouse series, now at the Brenden Theatres at the Palms, which always brings interesting movies to town. I'm glad to see it returning, and now at a theater that people actually go to.) Opened limited February 13; in Las Vegas this week

Watchmen (Patrick Wilson, Malin Akerman, Jackie Earle Haley, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode, dir. Zack Snyder)
My review in Las Vegas Weekly
I'm definitely already feeling Watchmen overload, and there isn't much to say beyond what I said in my review. I feel like I'm coming at this from an in-between place; I'm not some overexcited fanboy just hyped up by the fact the movie exists, but I'm not unfamiliar with the comics medium like a number of mainstream critics seem to be (Anthony Lane's snide, willfully ignorant dismissal of the movie and pretty much the entirety of comic books is especially unforgivable). I love the original graphic novel, and I would have loved to see a great movie version of it. I give Snyder credit for trying, but he was probably doomed from the start, and the slavishly faithful approach doesn't make for a satisfying movie. At least this might spur more people to read the original. Wide release

Movies opening this week

No podcast this week because, well, just take a look at what I had to work with.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (Kristin Kreuk, Neal McDonough, Chris Klein, dir. Andrzej Bartkowiak)
The only remotely entertaining thing about this movie is Chris Klein's hilariously awful performance as a grizzled badass cop. Not only is he grossly miscast, but he then also overcompensates for his inherent blandness by reading every line with this absurd exaggerated sneer, and contorting his face into some hilarious parody of a tough guy (just check out the photo). Plus, he signs off all his walkie-talkie conversations with his support team by saying "Nash out!" like he's Ryan Seacrest. Except Ryan Seacrest would probably be more convincing in the role. Klein aside, this movie is boring and nonsensical and terribly written and surprisingly stingy with the fight sequences. And other than smoldering-hot three-day Chris Klein stubble, those are pretty much the only reason anyone would see a movie like this. Wide release

Movies opening this week (and last week)

Apologies for the unplanned hiatus in posting; I've been uncommonly busy the past couple of weeks. I think this is the first time I've completely missed posting about new releases since I started this blog over four years ago. Oops. Anyway, you can listen to me chat about last week's openings with my old Xtreme Disorder cohort Brian Black on last week's Josh Bell Hates Everything podcast; this week is so lacking in worthwhile releases that instead I devoted the podcast with Tony Macklin just to talking about the Oscars (it's missing the last 10 minutes, but I hope will be fixed ASAP).

Opening this week:

Fired Up (Nicholas D'Agosto, Eric Christian Olsen, Sarah Roemer, dir. Will Gluck)
Coraline aside, this year so far has been so dismal in terms of movie quality that I can't bother getting all, er, fired up about this forgettable and pointless movie. It doesn't have anything going for it, but it's short and efficient and I believe nearly made me laugh at one point (although I can't remember why). D'Agosto and Olsen give terrible performances, delivering every line, whether it's a joke or a heartfelt speech, with the same bored insincerity, and as has been noted elsewhere, D'Agosto and Olsen are just absurdly old (28 and 31, respectively) to be playing high-schoolers. It is indeed like the filmmakers aren't even trying, which sadly sums up most of 2009 so far. Wide release

From last week:

Confessions of a Shopaholic (Isla Fisher, Hugh Dancy, Krysten Ritter, dir. P.J. Hogan)
My review in Las Vegas Weekly
For a short time at the beginning, this movie almost had me on its side. Fisher is really charismatic and fun to watch, and as I've said many times, I like movies that bother to take seriously things that are traditionally considered frivolous. But this movie eventually drowns in its own hypocrisy, with no idea whether to be a smart cautionary tale or a frothy escapist comedy. Plus, it wastes a killer supporting cast. Still, I expect to see big things from Fisher, especially if she can find a vehicle worthy of her talents. Wide release

Friday the 13th (Jared Padalecki, Danielle Panabaker, Amanda Righetti, dir. Marcus Nispel)
As others have pointed out, the original Friday the 13th isn't even all that good; it's completely overshadowed by the other two movies in the holy trinity of the slasher genre, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween, both of which are scarier, with more interesting characters and better writing, and made by genuine auteurs who went on to define an entire generation of horror filmmaking. This remake/reboot/re-whatever doesn't actually follow the first film's template anyway - it dispenses with the plot about Jason's mother killing camp counselors during the opening credits, and then plods through a generic rehash of Jason himself hacking up a bunch of interchangeable, frequently nude young people. There's no motivation or reason behind any of it, and Nispel gives it the same music-video look he brought to his Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. It's a bunch of cheap jump moments and gratuitous breast flashes, with nothing there to hold your interest. Even the original was better. Wide release

The International (Clive Owen, Naomi Watts, Brian F. O'Byrne, dir. Tom Tykwer)
If nothing else, the overhead shots in this movie look wonderful, and the much-praised shootout at the Guggenheim (for which the filmmakers built a whole replica of its rotunda) is every bit as impressive as you've heard. Take that out and put it in, say, a James Bond movie, and you'd really have something. Unfortunately, the story surrounding it is dull and full of cardboard characters, and surprisingly slow-paced for something by the director of Run Lola Run (then again, I remember being completely bored by his Lola follow-up, The Princess and the Warrior). Maybe more suprising is how conventional it is, given Tykwer's penchant for artiness and experimentation (Perfume: The Story of a Murderer may have been a mess, but it was an audacious mess). I would strongly argue for Naomi Watts as the greatest actress currently working in English-language films, but even she can't make her useless character interesting. The movie's ending, with a sort of hollow non-victory, doesn't make an insightful comment on the futility of challenging entrenched institutions; instead it just makes the preceding two hours feel like even more of a waste of time. Wide release

Movies opening this week

Forget what I said last week about a podcast hiatus; listen to me chat about these movies with Jeffrey K. Howard of Vegas Film Critic in this week's Josh Bell Hates Everything podcast, which should be posted later today.

Coraline (Voices of Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, John Hodgman, dir. Henry Selick)
My review in Las Vegas Weekly
Maybe I spoke too soon last week about the overall shittiness of this year's movies so far as well; I don't have much hope for the rest of February, but this turned out to be quite a well-made, entertaining film. It's great to see Selick back after so many years off from feature filmmaking; his James and the Giant Peach is a favorite of mine, and of course he never gets the credit he deserves for The Nightmare Before Christmas (although a lot of the press on Coraline seems to be working to correct that). The 3D in this movie was never gimmicky, which means you could probably see it in 2D and not miss much; that's the kind of 3D I prefer. I was surprised how genuinely creepy it got toward the end, yet still remained kid-friendly and positive. If you've already caught all the Oscar nominees and are despairing at the quality of everything else out right now, this is the one to see. Wide release

The Pink Panther 2 (Steve Martin, Jean Reno, Emily Mortimer, Andy Garcia, dir. Harald Zwart)
And then there's this, which is right back to the standards that have been set over the last month. I've never seen any of the original Peter Sellers Pink Panther movies (I know, I know) or the first Steve Martin version, so my opinion may not be worth much here. It could just be in comparison to the mountain of terrible movies I've seen recently, but I found this to be relatively tolerable; not exactly funny or interesting or worthwhile, but acceptable to sit through for 90 minutes with no other choice. The jokes are stupid, the plot is useless, the direction is barely serviceable, and the actors are all on autopilot, but it's such a good cast (Martin, Reno, Mortimer, Garcia, Alfred Molina, John Cleese, Jeremy Irons, Lily Tomlin) that they're bound to make things occasionally mildly entertaining. This is blasphemy to die-hard Sellers fans (like this week's podcast guest) I'm sure, but for me it was enough that it didn't make me want to hang myself like New in Town or Paul Blart did. Wide release

Reign storm: Secret Warriors #1 and Agents of Atlas #1

I tend to stay away from Marvel's big crossover events these days, so aside from how they affect the handful of Marvel universe books I read regularly (She-Hulk, X-Factor, Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain Britain and MI-13), I'm only dimly aware of the details of Civil War, World War Hulk, Secret Invasion and Dark Reign. But this week I happened to pick up first issues of two new series Marvel is launching out of Dark Reign; one (Secret Warriors) thanks to persistent encouragement from the comic-book-store dudes, and the other (Agents of Atlas) because I generally like the writer, and liked at least the first half of the recent miniseries with the same characters.

And in a way these two series seem like textbook examples of how to and how not to draw in new readers who aren't immersed in crossover fever. Reading Secret Warriors #1, I felt like I was jumping into the middle chapter of some endless, tortuous ongoing story, and the experience was very dissatisfying. Yes, technically, scripter Jonathan Hickman (working from a story co-written with Marvel guru Brian Michael Bendis) introduced each character on the new team, and sort of explained what they were trying to accomplish, at least in some scenes. But it all seemed more like a perfunctory re-introduction than a real new start, and although I did learn each character's name, I learned next to nothing about any of their backstory or personality.

Instead I got an insanely convoluted explanation from leader Nick Fury of what the team's real goal with the opening mission was, and a confusing cliffhanger that seems to have left even hardcore fans a little unsure of what it means. Part of the selling point of this issue from the guys at the store was that it turns the Marvel universe on its head, but the final reveal just seems to needlessly complicate years of perfectly good stories, and comes off as another in a long line of cheap "everything you know is wrong!" gimmicks that Marvel and DC have been steadily peddling for the last few years. Furthermore, I think at this point I am just past caring whether the Marvel universe gets turned on its head or not; what I want to read is a mostly self-contained series with its own identity and set of characters that doesn't require an encyclopedic knowledge of several other series being published concurrently. I'm sure all the back-up pages in this issue with detailed lists of HYDRA bases and whatnot are full of really intricate connections to recent issues of various Avengers books or whatever, but to me they were pretty much meaningless. Stefano Caselli's art was lovely, though.

The first issue of the Agents of Atlas ongoing series didn't escape all the pitfalls of Secret Warriors, but it certainly did a better job of explaining its premise and establishing itself apart from other books. I'm sure it helps that I read writer Jeff Parker's Agents of Atlas miniseries and thus am vaguely familiar with the characters, but even so Parker introduced them at least as well as Hickman did the Secret Warriors, plus included enough exposition to encapsulate the plot of the old series and the relevant Secret Invasion/Dark Reign details. I'm not entirely sold on the new angle that ties the Agents to Norman Osborn's new HAMMER agency, but I suppose that's what's necessary to bring in the large number of fans who only care about a book if it's intimately connected to a dozen others.

Carlo Pagulayan's art didn't live up to the great work Leonard Kirk did on the Agents miniseries, but it was perfectly solid superhero stuff, and fit Parker's pulp-adventure tone well (better was the throwback Silver Age-ish art by Benton Jew in the backup story, which fulfills Marvel's requirement to feature Wolverine in 90 percent of their books). Even though my excitement for the Agents miniseries petered out toward the end, this issue was fun and likeable enough that I'll be giving the next one a shot, which is more than I can say for Secret Warriors.

Movies opening this week

Hear me chat about these movies with the gamely masochistic Ken Miller of Las Vegas Weekly in this week's Josh Bell Hates Everything podcast (probably the last one for a few weeks, since there isn't much worth talking about - or even screening in Vegas - for a little while).

New in Town (Renée Zellweger, Harry Connick Jr., Siobhan Fallon Hogan, dir. Jonas Elmer)
My review in Las Vegas Weekly
I don't know if I'm just getting crankier, or if I've gotten stuck seeing more bad movies than usual, or if this month really is as shitty as it seems, but I can't remember a time when so many awful movies came out in quick succession to the almost complete absence of anything good. Even dumping-ground movies like this are often just mediocre, and sometimes even surprisingly good. But with this, Bride Wars and Paul Blart: Mall Cop, I've definitely seen some of the worst movies in recent memory, and quite possibly the worst movies I'll see all year (one can only hope). This has every awful rom-com cliché you can imagine, plus insults to both city folk and country folk, plus a main character who is alternately portrayed as a moron and a savvy businesswoman - but always as out of place in a man's world. I'm sure there are similar movies that are nearly as bad, but this one just struck all the wrong chords with me. It's sad enough that Paul Blart has been such a huge hit; I can only hope that people will have enough good sense to stay away from this movie this weekend. Wide release

The Uninvited (Emily Browning, Elizabeth Banks, Arielle Kebbel, David Strathairn, dir. Thomas and Charles Guard)
I think any amount of goodwill toward this movie has to come from diminished expectations; we expect the bottom of the barrel from our January horror movies, and this movie is slightly more competently assembled than its title doppelganger The Unborn. But it's also extremely dull and tedious, especially if you can figure out the rather obvious plot twist early on, and not particularly scary. The acting on the whole is slightly above average for this sort of thing (Banks has fun with her evil-stepmother part, even if the twist renders her performance a little problematic), and the plot mostly adds up even after it's completely turned on its head. But the characters remain uninteresting and one-dimensional, and unlike in the recent My Bloody Valentine remake, there isn't any fun camp along the way to the stupid reveal. If the plot mechanics don't grab you, there's not much else to go on. Wide release

Movies opening this week

No podcast this week, due to scheduling issues (and the fact that there's not really anything worth talking about).

Inkheart (Brendan Fraser, Eliza Hope Bennett, Paul Bettany, dir. Iain Softley)
There's nothing particularly bad about this movie, but there isn't anything to get excited about, either. It's mediocre through and through, a half-hearted fantasy adventure with a sort of interesting premise (people who can bring books literally to life by reading aloud) that's never fully explored. Fraser coasts through another kid-friendly square-jawed-hero role, and the supporting players do solid but unremarkable work (this is a pretty deep cast, though - Helen Mirren, Jim Broadbent, Andy Serkis). You could take kids to it and be mildly entertained, but otherwise it's entirely missable. Wide release

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (Michael Sheen, Rhona Mitra, Bill Nighy, dir. Patrick Tatopoulos)
As amusing as it is to see Michael "Frost" Sheen with grungy long hair and a bare chest wailing and gnashing his teeth and turning into a werewolf, this movie is still an incoherent waste of time. I saw and reviewed the first Underworld movie when it was released in 2003, but remember very little about it, and I never saw the second one. Obviously die-hard fans of the series will get more out of this movie than I did, but doing a little Wikipedia research only led me to believe that Rise is even more pointless, filling in a tiny bit of back story that could have been relegated to a handful of flashbacks in the next sequel. Like the Star Wars prequels, it all leads up to a predetermined conclusion, and has essentially no suspense or audience investment. It also looks ugly and cheap, like it was shot on about three sets, and of course has terrible dialogue and hammy overacting, plus one of the most ludicrous sex scenes I've ever seen. At least it's short. Wide release

The Wire, season four

As I'm already more than halfway through the disappointing fifth and final season of The Wire, the strength and complexity of the excellent fourth season (as well as many of its satisfying plot developments) are starting to fade, but even the subsequent missteps can't taint the quality of what is easily the show's best set of episodes. I started watching The Wire because of the critical mass of praise, both from professionals and from friends, and it's mostly lived up to expectations. After being disappointed with certain elements of the third season (in particular, the storyline about drug-dealing free zone Hamsterdam), I came into the fourth season a little skeptical, but it quickly won me over with one of the most detailed and heartbreaking portrayals of a corrupt institution that the show has ever produced.

City hall, the drug trade, the ports and even to some extent the police force have gotten off lightly compared to the skewering handed to the school system during this season, but as mind-numbing as it could be it was always crushingly real, the potential of a handful of bright kids petering out right before your eyes as teachers, administrators and politicians stood by, helpless to stop it. Yet in its own way this was the show's most optimistic season: Pryzbylewski, after ending his law-enforcement career in disgrace last year, redeemed himself as a teacher, starting out in over his head but soon reaching his students in a meaningful way. Bunny Colvin, the well-meaning architect of Hamsterdam, teamed up with an equally well-meaning but non-street-savvy academic to start a successful program for kids seemingly lost to a life of crime. It got shut down by the end of the season, but in the meantime it effected real change in the lives of a handful of kids.

Tommy Carcetti, a fearsome combination of political know-how and genuine empathy, got elected mayor, and by the end of the season I would have been happy to vote the guy president. McNulty, glimpsed only briefly in most episodes and not at all in some, found peace as a beat officer not concerned with the knotty politics of high-level police work. Daniels finally got some recognition for his stellar command skills with a number of swift promotions. Boxing trainer Cutty, out of place in season three, became an important beacon of hope for the crime-infested neighborhood. Sure, not everything ended well for everyone (especially drug addict Bubbles, and three of the four school-age characters introduced at the beginning of the season), but there was a sense that something was going right somewhere, that not everything was unrelentingly bleak. Yet even with such guarded optimism, nothing during the season felt as unrealistic to me as Hamsterdam.

I know from watching part of season five that many of these positive developments are quickly undone, but that doesn't change the way that this season was probably more satisfying as a complete story than any other. In painting a detailed portrait of a modern American city, creators David Simon and Ed Burns tend toward the pessimistic, but here they never forgot to show the small rays of hope. Even a character like Namond, with a drug-hustling father in jail and a mother who is perhaps the worst parent of all time (constantly berating him to quit school, start dealing drugs and become more violent), can escape the streets thanks to a combination of willpower, education, luck and a helping hand (from Bunny Colvin). His success story, of course, is contrasted with that of his friend Randy, another smart kid who, thanks to a combination of bad luck, mistakes and an indifferent system, ends up irrevocably lost to the streets (as we see even clearer in season five). It's that level of nuance and empathy, combined with cynical realism, that makes this season the show's clear zenith.

Previous Wire coverage:

• Season three
• Season two
• Season one

Movies opening this week

Hear me chat about these movies with comedian and filmmaker Jason Harris on this week's Josh Bell Hates Everything podcast.

Last Chance Harvey (Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, Eileen Atkins, dir. Joel Hopkins)
My review in Las Vegas Weekly
It's a testament to how desperate the Hollywood Foreign Press is for "respectable" comedies to honor that this mediocre-at-best rom-com got two Golden Globe nominations. I suppose it's a safe bet nominating people like Hoffman and Thompson, but this is the very definition of forgettable. I'm already struggling to come up with something useful to say about it. One thing that does bug me is the way this is touted as a great showcase for older actors to play romantic roles, sort of ignoring the fact that Hoffman is still more than 20 years older than Thompson. A more refreshing and appropriate love interest for him might have been, say, Judi Dench or Helen Mirren, but I don't think producers are quite willing to take that risk yet. As it stands, Hoffman comes off more like a father figure than a love interest for Thompson, and it adds a layer of creepiness to the otherwise extremely dull story. Opened limited December 25; wide release this week

My Bloody Valentine (Jensen Ackles, Jaime King, Kerr Smith, dir. Patrick Lussier)
It's certainly the season of the shitty horror movie, as we learned last week with The Unborn, but this one at least is amusingly trashy and knows its limitations. There aren't any pretentious Holocaust references or appeals to Jewish mythology here; just a dude with a pickax and a gas mask hacking people to bits. Plus, it's in 3D (well, in most theaters; there's no point in seeing the non-3D version), and Lussier knows that, despite all the hype from people like James Cameron and Jeffrey Katzenberg, 3D is an inherently cheesy gimmick. So we get all sorts of things (pickax, gun, naked breasts, etc.) pointing out at the audience, very graphic three-dimensional gore, and things flying directly at the screen. It's all reasonably good fun if you like horror schlock, although of course also the plot is ridiculous, the acting (especially from Ackles) is terrible, and the twist ending is moronic. Still, if I didn't get such a headache from those damn 3D glasses, I would have had a pretty good time. Wide release

Paul Blart: Mall Cop (Kevin James, Jayma Mays, Keir O'Donnell, dir. Steve Carr)
I expected last week's Bride Wars to be the nadir of this typically dead movie period, but Mall Cop was actually a much more painful experience, despite not being quite as dire a sign for the state of American society. Completely unfunny, with an annoying, unlikable lead character, terrible acting all around, a plot stolen ineptly from Die Hard, lame fat jokes, lame slapstick, an absurdly unrealistic love interest, pointlessly extreme sports-oriented villains, a horrible soundtrack, stilted dialogue ... I could go on. Suffice to say, already easily a top contender for worst movie of the year. Wide release

Revolutionary Road (Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Kathy Bates, dir. Sam Mendes)
I come at these big Oscar-bait pictures with extreme skepticism, and this one never quite won me over. I think Winslet and DiCaprio both do impressive work, and I think that the examination of the deep underbelly of suburbia is still interesting if done right. But Mendes is a very careful and methodical director, and the movie comes off like a furniture catalog when it ought to be more emotionally affecting. Michael Shannon's overpraised performance is a complete cliche (the crazy guy who says what everyone is secretly thinking), and even Winslet and DiCaprio never seem to quite connect with each other. The novel is highly acclaimed and no doubt better at illuminating the inner lives of these characters, who seem just out of reach throughout the movie. Opened limited December 26; in Las Vegas this week

The Wrestler (Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood, dir. Darren Aronofsky)
My review in Las Vegas Weekly
This one, on the other hand, was much more successful at winning me over, although I still didn't exactly love it. Rourke gives a great performance, Aronofsky effectively overhauls his style, and Tomei brings depth to a stock stripper-with-a-heart-of-gold part. But the script does hit all the expected beats, and Wood's role especially is very paint-by-numbers. I'm a sucker for any movie that takes a profession or hobby that usually gets little respect and approaches it seriously, so I really like the movie's take on pro wrestling. And the stripped-down style and realistic performances do make the cliches go down easy. Reservations aside, this is a good movie, and an entirely worthwhile comeback for Rourke. Opened limited December 17; in Las Vegas this week

South Park: Imaginationland

I gave up on South Park almost three years ago, and I haven't really given the show much thought since then. There have been occasional moments when a certain episode enters the mainstream conversation, and my curiosity is mildly piqued; I read online about the World of Warcraft episode, and actually bothered checking out clips of the Steven-Spielberg-and-George-Lucas-sodomize-Indiana-Jones bit. The Indy segments only confirmed all my worst criticisms of the show, that it just makes labored topical jokes over and over again, beating viewers over the head with creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone's opinions on various current events.

One other South Park moment that seemed to get a good deal of attention was the "Imaginationland" trilogy of episodes, which at one time was conceived by Parker and Stone as a potential new feature film. It's been released on DVD sort of masquerading as a new movie (although all three episodes together only amount to about 66 minutes), and when I got the DVD in the mail I figured it would be a good opportunity to give the show another shot. Then, of course, the DVD sat next to my TV for a good nine months, but I finally did get around to watching it, and my response is a pretty resounding shrug. It's certainly not as labored or heavy-handed as many of the show's other latter-day episodes, but it's also lacking in the creative spark that made the early years (or the first feature film) so exciting.

Partly the trilogy gets by on the amusing juxtaposition of beloved childhood characters getting violently dismembered, but even that wears off quickly. Parker and Stone have terrorists show up as catalysts for the main storyline (they attack the world of human imagination), but that angle is left largely unexplored. For such a plot-driven set of episodes, it's full of narrative holes. There is a bit of mild social commentary at the end, but mostly "Imaginationland" is just about jokes, and in that area it inspires only a few chuckles. I feel like the subplot about Cartman trying to get Kyle to suck his balls gets trotted out in approximately every third episode.

Also on the DVD were two bonus episodes with content related to "Imaginationland." The first, "Woodland Critter Christmas," is one I saw back when I was watching the show regularly, and I remember it being a weird, twisted detour, one interested primarily in sick humor with very little topical relevance. The other, "Manbearpig," is a perfect example of the show's worst tendencies; it repeats its attacks on Al Gore until they lose all effectiveness, then fills time with some warmed-over bits of vulgar humor. "Imaginationland" as a whole is a sign that there's still some cleverness and creativity left in this old show, but it's not enough to get me back on board every week.

Movies opening this week

Hear me discuss these movies with Las Vegas Weekly Managing Editor Ken Miller in this week's Josh Bell Hates Everything podcast.

Bride Wars (Kate Hudson, Anne Hathaway, Candice Bergen, dir. Gary Winick)
My review in Las Vegas Weekly
Make no mistake: This is a terrible movie. But I think I was hoping for something a little more go-for-broke terrible, rather than the simply mundane terrible that's the actual result. It's so easy to hate this movie that it's almost not worth the effort, although the combination of Kate Hudson's embarrassing career, the rampant condescending sexism and Hollywood's absurd obsession with ostentatious weddings is quite the toxic blend. Honestly, I had been sort of looking forward to this movie since seeing the trailer, because something this repellently awful is really quite fun to tear apart. But it was glossy and light enough not to be as despicable as something like Seven Pounds, which has higher pretensions to saying something important. I'm appalled by the movie's message, but it's not delivered with enough conviction to get me really riled. However, I'm happy to let MaryAnn Johanson do the talking. Wide release

Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood, Bee Vang, Ahney Her, dir. Clint Eastwood)
I like Clint Eastwood, I really do, but I think he is getting a pass here, big time, thanks to the memories this movie evokes of his past tough-guy efforts. It's a clumsily written, predictable story (aside from the mildly interesting ending), with awful dialogue and some questionable acting from the supporting players. Eastwood's playing with his own image, but I don't think it comes off as clever or really has anything to say about lone-man-against-the-world movies. There is a small school of thought arguing that rather than an actual Clint Eastwood macho-tough-guy movie, it's a satire of same. I don't buy this argument, but it can be interesting to contemplate. (This AV Club podcast teases it out intelligently.) Really, this is a trite movie about a crotchety old guy whose heart warms thanks to his spunky teenage neighbors, full of silly old-timey racial epithets and some pretty broad stereotypes. If it weren't for Eastwood and the added poignancy of this possibly being his last performance, no one would be paying attention. Opened limited December 12; wide release this week

The Unborn (Odette Yustman, Meagan Good, Cam Gigandet, Gary Oldman, dir. David S. Goyer)
Here we have the perfect illustration of the January dumping ground: the shitty chick flick for women, and the shitty horror movie for guys. Marginally better than Bride Wars, this is nevertheless a waste of time, a perfectly disposable horror movie devoid of any scares that don't come from the ever-present jump moment, full of plot holes and indifferent performances, and with many supposedly creepy effects moments (the dog with the upside-down head) that just look silly. Goyer gets a lot of credit for writing or co-writing a handful of decent superhero movies (the first two Blades, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight), but he was also at least partly responsible for Jumper and Kickboxer 2. This is firmly in that latter camp, and doesn't bode well for Goyer's supposed next directorial outing, the Magneto spinoff movie. Wide release

TV premiering tonight: 13 - Fear Is Real

It's a shame that Sam Raimi has stooped so low as to executive-produce this crap; sure, he's put his name on plenty of schlock before, but at least low-budget horror movies and cheesy fantasy series have a certain entertainment value. Shitty reality shows are pretty much the lowest form of pop-culture product, and this is a particularly egregious example. It throws the superficial trappings of a horror movie over your standard elimination-challenges-and-backstabbing format, ripping off pretty much wholesale a number of ideas from the Saw movies without attribution. Like on Sci Fi's Estate of Panic, many of the "scary" challenges amount to something close to torture (in the first episode, contestants are placed in coffins and buried underground), although the contestants are all such whiny morons that it's tough to feel sorry for them.

The saddest thing is that they either believe they are in some sort of actual danger, or they're all acting that way to further the lame horror-movie conceit. One especially despicable contestant wails about "monsters" and is afraid of every little sound, even as a camera crew is following her every move. Another prays to Jesus during the buried-alive challenge; certainly He's intimately concerned with the fates of reality-show contestants. All of this fabricated peril simply serves to highlight how unreal reality shows generally are, making the title of this one especially ironic. Sam Raimi, do you really need money this badly? The CW, Wednesdays, 8 p.m.